Carson Aims at $29-Million Budget; Less Than in ‘89-’90

The Carson City Council agreed Monday on $29 million as the target for the current year’s budget, a decrease of $900,000 from what the city spent last year.

The decision, made at a budget workshop more than two months into the fiscal year that began July 1, set no specifics for the amounts to be spent by each department.

Mayor Vera Robles DeWitt said the council hopes to vote on a complete budget package, which will be drafted by Finance Director Lorraine Oten, at a budget hearing Tuesday.

Last year, the council passed a $34.8-million budget but spent only $29.9 million after instituting a hiring freeze and cuts in capital purchases midway through the year to keep down an anticipated deficit. However, the city still spent $2.2 million from its reserves to balance the 1989-90 fiscal budget. There is now $7 million in reserve.

The city’s financial problems stem, in part, from stagnant sales tax revenues, on which the city depends for about half of its income. Overall, expenditures have risen almost twice as much as revenues in the last five years, city officials said. In addition, state budget cuts this year cost Carson $1 million in anticipated revenue.

The city built up a large reserve fund in the early 1980s, which the city wants to preserve. Officials are reluctant to use it for routine expenses, preferring to reserve it for replacement of capital equipment and emergencies.

The latest 1990-91 budget proposal is an increase from the $28-million spending package presented to the council last week by an advisory committee. The committee’s proposed budget recommended steep reductions in services and layoffs to balance the budget.

In writing the budget, Oten will use suggestions made by employees, union representatives and staff, as well as public and council input at workshops held this week. The budget is likely to include an array of increases in fees and charges for services, council members said.

Oten presented the tentative $29-million spending plan to the council at its workshop Monday. Discussions at the workshop indicated that any final budget will require layoffs, although the number of positions that would be affected has not been determined.

Oten said her tentative proposal is fiscally sound and is based on “a more optimistic outlook” regarding city revenues than the advisory committee’s.

In addition, she said, proposed fee increases would account for an additional $600,000 in revenue. Such increases would include raising the price of Parks and Recreation Department swimming lessons and swimming pool rental fees, as well as instituting a charge for participating in the city’s youth sports programs.

The latest proposal, one of many efforts since May, moves the city a step closer to adopting a final budget for this fiscal year. Last year’s budget was adopted halfway into the fiscal year.

DeWitt last week blamed the other council members for the city’s recurring tardiness in preparing a budget. “Nobody wanted to bite the bullet” and face budget cuts, she said, adding that hostility among council members has made it difficult to work together on the budget.

Council members Sylvia Muise and Michael Mitoma disagreed, saying city department heads had done a poor job in coming up with areas where they could save money.

“I think that staff becomes politically motivated when it comes to budget time,” Muise said. “I think staff, in fact, riles up the troops if we propose any cuts--that’s how staff saves their territory.”

Mitoma said the staff “is under the misguided conception that there are unlimited resources in the city.”